By Wayne Madsen and Andrew Kreig

New information has emerged in the joint Wayne Madsen Report/Justice Integrity Project investigation of the "Maria" case. Maria was temporarily held for ransom in 1993, according to witnesses speaking to police.

As we previously reported, Katie Johnson alleged in federal lawsuits that Donald Trump and his friend, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, raped her when she was 13  in New York City in 1994. Johnson's alleged also that the two men raped a 12-year old — only identified as "Maria." Our investigation discovered that Maria had been abducted from Waterbury, Connecticut in March 1993 when she was 11.

Eventually, Maria ended up at "parties" at a midtown Manhattan townhouse owned by Epstein's billionaire friend Les Wexner where underage girls were allegedly sexually assaulted by Trump and Epstein.

We previously reported (including via the graphic at right showing the mansion and file photos of Trump and Epstein) that Maria's kidnappers were involved in a child trafficking ring that provided abductees to wealthy individuals like Trump and Epstein. Lawyers for Trump and Epstein have sought to deny or otherwise downplay the claims.

Our new information is that Maria was reported missing by her late mother to the Waterbury Police on March 20, 1993, at 11:30 pm. However, Maria was actually abducted the previous day, March 19, authorities said, creating a gap betweenthe kidnap and the mother's report of it to authorities.

Update: The New Yorker, Donald Trump, a Playboy Model, and a System for Concealing Infidelity, Ronan Farrow, Feb. 16, 2018. One woman’s account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair.

Maria was last seen on March 19 by a young girl in the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood. The girl said she saw Maria talking to a man who turned out to be a Colombian national known by the nickname of "Papito," which means "little daddy" in English. Later, the man claimed that he once lived in Maria's neighborhood but he was not in Waterbury at the time of the alleged conversation with Maria but was in New York "with his family."

The Waterbury Police Department missing person report states that Maria was last seen outside of Nash's Pizza, a corner eatery located in the neighborhood where she lived with her mother and step-father.

By Andrew Kreig and Wayne Madsen

Recent claims that Donald Trump paid hush money before the 2016 election to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up a 2006 affair underscore far more sinister events.

Such a payoff would show not simply Trump’s low morals and high arrogance — but also his propensity for outright crime in ways potentially damaging to the United States and many of its residents.

These grim possibilities are especially relevant to our recent exposé “Welcome to Waterbury,” which drew on 2016 lawsuit allegations that Trump and his billionaire friend Jeffrey Epstein in 1994 raped “Maria,” age 12, and “Jane Doe,” age 13, also known as Katie Johnson, in a New York City luxury townhouse then being used by Epstein. Details are here in the Wayne Madsen Report and the Justice Integrity Project (JIP).

Today, we compare those claims by underage girls with the ones by Stormy Daniels, as reported by, among other places, In Touch magazine in column last week.

The In Touch cover story, illustated at left, was based on her blunt recollections of sleeping with Trump and otherwise socializing with him shortly after his wife Melania gave birth to son Barron in March 2006, according to the Daniels account years ago. In Touch did not publish it at the time but did so this month to follow up the Wall Street Journal’s report on Jan. 12 that Daniels received $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election from Trump attorney Michael Cohen via a company temporarily created to make the payment, thus obscuring its origin and purpose.

Cohen and Daniels (born Stephanie Clifford) later denied an affair or hush money. More generally, Trump and his representatives have issued blanket denials against all of those nearly 20 women who have alleged sexual harassment or assault. The many news reports of such accusations and denials include Donald Trump says women who accuse him of sexual assault are lying and The 19 Women Who Accused President Trump of Sexual Misconduct. 

To explore this further, we examine more closely the Daniels and Maria/Jane Doe stories. An extensive appendix below illustrates both Trump-related news coverage of these points, as well the emerging #MeToo movement protesting rape, harassment and cover-up by powerful men victimizing women and, in some cases, underage children of both sexes.

To buttress Trump's denials, he allegedly used his celebrity status (much like he described in the Access Hollywood tape that surfaced during the presidential campaign, as illustrated by the screenshot with Arianne Zucker and Billy Bush) to do what he wanted. The stories demonstrate that Trump has an established system whereby his minions can threaten and/or bribe his targets to cover up crimes or infidelity.

But the true danger is not the superficial embarassment that Trump might experience. Instead, the threat to the nation is what blackmailers, global and national, might extort from Trump and his administration to keep his secrets.

By Wayne Madsen and Andrew Kreig

A woman whom Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein allegedly sodomized and raped at the age of 12 along with at least one other underage girl at a midtown Manhattan townhouse in 1994 is alive and trying to maintain obscurity from alt-right operatives who have identified her and her current residence.

The Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) and Justice Integrity Project (JIP) are revealing here for the first time the story of “Maria,” who was identified as such in two 2016 federal civil lawsuits brought against Trump and Epstein by another underage victim of the pair, Katie Johnson (aka, "Jane Doe").

The product of a month-long investigation that took us to the site of the girl’s kidnapping in Waterbury, Connecticut, this information comes from confidential sources in multiple states. They have been pursuing the “Maria” story since the 1994 incident was first referenced in Johnson’s lawsuits. Johnson dropped the suit after she became the victim of physical threats by individuals who claimed to be Trump supporters, according to her account in court records.

The original tip came to WMR, which can report exclusively that a Waterbury girl, “Maria,” was the 12-year old alleged to have been a child rape victim of Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, shown at right. The crimes allegedly occurred at a midtown Manhattan mansion then owned by Epstein’s friend Les Wexner, a billionaire retailing mogul.

Maria was kidnapped on March 19, 1993, when she was 11-years old from the front of Nash’s Pizza in Waterbury. The girl's kidnappers were involved in a child trafficking ring that provided abductees to wealthy individuals like Trump and Epstein in Manhattan, according to our information.

Jan. 13 and Jan. 18 Updates: The Wall Street Journal reported (Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence) a hush payment just before the 2016 election to porn actress Stormy Daniels to deny an alleged affair in 2006 with the married Trump. This 2016 time period was about the time that Katie Johnson withdrew her lawsuit. Among follow-ups, the New York Daily News published a cover story focused on an alleged comment Trump made referencing his daughter. Also, the Washington Post wrote, Why are we only now hearing of a porn star’s tale about Trump?

Regarding the 1993 kidnapping of Maria: The Waterbury Police Department has refused to provide us with a copy of the original police report on her abduction. It defers to Linda Wihbey, the city’s Corporation Counsel.

On December 12, 2017, Wihbey made her views known in a phone call with Andrew Kreig of JIP, as Wayne Madsen listened. She said that she was ready to “welcome us to Waterbury” until she decided that our investigation was “hostile” to her and Waterbury’s interests. These suffered greatly some 17 years ago over a high-profile pedophilia incident involving the city’s Republican mayor.

Waterbury’s stance emerged from our request for the 1993 police report on Maria’s abduction, including any relevant witness statements provided to the police.

The site of “Maria’s” kidnapping in 1993, then known as Nash’s Pizza restaurant, since relocated [WMR photo]

This month's release of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continued the Trump administration's chaotic process that confuses the public under a guise of compliance with a 1992 law requiring full release this year..

Mary Ferrell Foundation President Rex Bradford has described the Trump release process via the National Archives as a "travesty." Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger, an attorney and book publisher, predicted what he called a "fiasco." He followed up with the column The JFK Cover-Up Continues  describing the process as successful cover for criminal rogues at the CIA, with the agency's successors probably grateful to President Trump for his role in confusing the public.

Baldwin Helps Us To Understand

Fortunately, the famed actor Alec Baldwin helped cut through the confusion last month with a bold, civic-minded revelation of how the NBC and MSNBC continue to support the disputed Warren Commission account of the murder and to suppress alternative discussion. Baldwin is shown at right in one of his most frequent portraits and below left on the cover of his memoir Nevertheless published last spring.

There's more on that below, along with a mini-history of how the major media have avoided reporting on evidence in the murder through the decades.

Instead, the broadcast networks, major newspapers, wire services, book publishers and academic institutions distract their audiences by using smear terms like "conspiracy theory." They create so much needless confusion that it's understandable that President Trump accuses such organizations of delivering "fake news" even when journalists have a sound basis for their coverage.

Today's column first provides an opinion about the JFK case and cover-up. We then report specifics on the latest release by the National Archives, which occurred at the end of the workday on Friday, Dec. 15 (the traditional time for public relations operatives to bury news). Finally, we report the announced timetable for future JFK document releases. An appendix lists recent, relevant news stories and the 48-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination."

The national media have missed for the most part how voter reaction against Alabama’s corrupt Republican rule helped Democrat Doug Jones defeat the GOP U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore on Dec. 12 in the state’s special election.

Recent financial, law enforcement and sex scandals at the highest levels of all three branches of government in Alabama helped prepare voters to defeat Moore by 49-48 margin last week. Republican Jeff Sessions had won that seat with 97 percent of the vote unopposed by Democrats in 2014 before vacating it this year upon his appointment as U.S. attorney general.

It's true also that Jones (shown at right) and his campaign team orchestrated a masterful strategy to generate high turnout against Moore, a religious zealot with a scandalous past.

But Moore would not have been so vulnerable in the overwhelmingly Republican state if previous Alabama scandals and the dubious performance of the new Trump administration had not softened GOP support even amongst those who normally trust righteous-sounding candidates. 

Moore’s predatory activities followed a decade of scandals by others. One led to the resignation of Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (shown below, at far left) this year in a mind-boggling sex scandal. Also, House Speaker Mike Hubbard, the state’s most powerful legislator during recent years, received a four-year prison term last year for massive corruption, as reported here.

Bentley’s scandal included several aspects that are particularly relevant to the Jones-Moore senate race. For one, Bentley’s longtime claim to have been a religiously inspired “family values” Republican was destroyed by massive coverage of his affair with his married staffer, Rebekah Caldwell Mason. The former television reporter and Miss Alabama contestant is shown at center.

At right is Stephen Collier, the former head of ALEA [Alabama Law Enforcement Agency]. The governor fired Collier for not cooperating sufficiently in sinister reprisals against bloggers exposing the governor's sexcapades. Collier responded with litigation that helped keep the scandals prominent.

Our Justice Integrity Project has developed deep sources in Alabama and has reported on many of these scandals and their cover-ups. One overview was our 2016 column How To Understand Political Sex Scandal Allegations.

In Alabama, the state's one-party governance was created in part by a long-running and massive political prosecution beginning in 1999 of former Gov. Don Siegelman, the state's leading Democrat during his term (1999 - 2003) and for years thereafter until Republican prosecutors and judges finally flattened him. Complete dominance by Republicans weakened accountability that might have come from civic leaders and their institutions. Our reviews of Alabama newspapers and other supposed watchdog voices show far less initiative and independence in recent years than a decade or so ago.

The harm? Corruption involving sex, bribery, dishonest law enforcement and/or national security contracts (all covert factors in the Siegelman case, like many others) often causes blackmail and huge rip-offs of federal taxpayers, as well as other harms to third-party victims.

And, while this column is headlined to focus primarily on Republican-led corruption in Alabama, the ripple effects strongly implicate many Democratic leaders.

These include such Washington-based leaders as President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan, as amplified below. For such reasons, our Project opposed the confirmation of Kagan, shown in a graphic at right to emphasize our opposition on ethical grounds to her confirmation despite her endorsement by about 100 of the nation's law school deans, including those two awarding this editor his degrees: Yale Law School and the University of Chicago School of Law..

The Alabama scandals deeply involving the Department of Justice and FBI raise questions also about the integrity of other investigations, including the ongoing probe of President Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.

Whatever one thinks of Trump or Mueller (shown as FBI director), it is difficult for an independent observer to conclude that the U.S. Justice Department has acted professionally and non-politically in Alabama. That should concern those who believe the much-praised Mueller, former head of the FBI during most of that time, will automatically act purely according legal principles in his current work.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the longest serving member of Congress, resigned this week under sexual harassment allegations and Minnesota U.S. Sen. Al Franken was pressured to do the same in a resignation confirmed Thursday.

At least 32 Democratic colleagues signed statements Dec. 6 urging Franken to resign following multiple claims that he had harassed women years ago, primarily when he was an entertainer before his 2008 election to the Senate, where he has been reliable liberal voter.

Meanwhile, President Trump and the Republican National Committee ramped up their support for Alabama's embattled GOP U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore in the special election scheduled next Tuesday for one of the state's two seats.

A New York Daily News front page story headlined "I'm With Perv" on Dec. 4 mocked Trump's decision to back Moore over Democrat Doug Jones despite multiple allegations from women that Moore had sought to date or molest them while they were in their teens and he was in his thirties and working as a state prosecutor.

Allegations against Conyers, 88 (right), included claims that he forced himself upon staffers during a career that began with his election to Congress in 1964 in a district representing part of Detroit. Earlier this week, he issued a statement from a hospital room, reportedly being treated for stress, saying that he was resigning.

Republicans and their sympathizers had mounted a campaign against Conyers and Franken following the Moore revelations. As part of the Justice Integrity Project's coverage, this editor attended a news conference last week at the National Press Club featuring several accusers of former President Bill Clinton who called for renewed investigations of his conduct during the 1990s and the removal of Conyers and Franken from their current posts.